(CNN)In a debate between Harvard College students and those from any other college, some might guess that the Harvard students would win. And if the other side was a group of inmates at a maximum-security prison? Maybe even more so.

That would be a mistake.

Inmates from the Eastern New York Correctional Facility defeated the prestigious Harvard debate team in mid-September as part of the Bard Prison Initiative, a program run by Bard College to provide college education to qualifying prisoners, according to the Wall Street Journal .

If you knew the prison debate club's record, you might have voted for the inmates. They've defeated a nationally ranked team from the University of Vermont and the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. (They lost a rematch against West Point, and it's become something of a rivalry.)

The prison club had invited the Harvard College Debating Union to participate.

Inmates had to defend a point of view with which they fiercely disagreed, a common practice in debate competition: "Resolved: Public schools in the United States should have the ability to deny enrollment to undocumented students."